I live in London.

With friends in Colorado, skiing the mountain areas between Arapahoe Basin and Beaver Creek became part of my life from the 1990s. The Colorado Ski Pass first enabled me to do this. Then, when Vail Resorts bought into substantial tracts of these skiing facilities, its Epic Pass became the norm for me skiing up until February 2020. The next month, your government and mine closed all air travel between our countries due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

When Vail began sending out its 2020-21 ski season literature, those COVID-19-related regulations were still firmly in place, including lockdowns across Britain. Beginning in September 2020, I wrote to Vail asking them what the position would be should I not be able to fly to Denver. With no response, the eventual 11 emails to Vail had morphed into telling the company not to activate the automatic bank debit transfer on my annual Epic Pass.

The friend I stay with in Breckenridge went to the Vail office to query this, given that my account had nonetheless been docked. (Wells Fargo incidentally confirmed the debit transfer had to be canceled by Vail.) Vail told her they were very busy but someone would likely get in touch with me.

Since no one did, and with still no flights from London and thus no skiing possible, I wrote to Robert Katz in January setting out my stall, he being chairman/CEO of Vail at that time. With no response, I again wrote to him in March.

With no response then either, I wonder how it is possible that this substantial Colorado organization can function in such an un-American way, having the balls to take your money for services not able to be delivered, yet having no balls to do what is honorable: respond.